It is difficult, of course, to speak positively of the political condition of a country of which one knows so little; but there seems to be a kind of feudal system in vigour here.  The hereditary princes (Daimios), some 360 in number (I doubt much their being all equally powerful), exercise extensive jurisdiction in their respective domains.  A Dutch officer, who visited one of these domains in a Japanese man-of-war, found that the chieftain would not allow even the officers of the Japanese Emperor to land on his territory.  The only control which the Emperor exerts over them is derived from his requiring all their wives and families to live at Yeddo permanently.  The Daimios themselves spend half the year in Yeddo, and the other half at their country places.  The Supreme Council of State appears to be in a great measure named by the Daimios, and the recent change of Government is supposed to have been a triumph of the protectionist or anti-foreign party.  There is no luxury or extravagance in any class.  No jewels or gold ornaments even at Court; but the nobles have handsome palaces, and large bodies of retainers.  A perfectly paternal government; a perfectly filial people; a community entirely self- supporting; peace within and without; no want; no ill-will between classes.  This is what I find in Japan in the year 1858, after one hundred years’ exclusion of foreign trade and foreigners.  Twenty years hence, what will be the contrast?

August 27th.—­Here I am at sea again.  It is 9 P.M.  I have just been on deck.  A lovely moon, nearly full, gliding through cloudless blue, spangled here and there with bright twinkling stars.  I begin to feel as if at last I was really on my way home.  Both my treaties are made, and I am steering westwards!  Is it so or am I to meet some great disappointment when I reach China?  I feel a sort of terror when I contemplate my return to that place.  My trip to Japan has been a green spot in the desert of my mission to the East.

[Sidenote:  A temple.] [Sidenote:  A juggler.]

But I must tell you how I have been spending my days since the 22nd, when I last added a word to this letter.  On the afternoon of that day, I had a long sitting with the Japanese Plenipotentiaries, and we went over the clauses of the Treaty which we had not reached on the previous day.  On the 23rd they returned, and we agreed finally on all the articles.  It was also settled that the signature should take place on the 26th (the very day two months after the signature of the Treaty of Tientsin), and that the delivery of the yacht should take place on the same day; the Japanese agreeing to salute the British flag with twenty-one guns from their batteries—­a proceeding unheard of in Japan.  On the 24th, we took a ride into the country, in the opposite direction to our former ride.  We passed through a long suburb on the shore of the sea, and eventually emerged into a rural district, rich and neat as that we